The Variable (S5, ep. 14)

Daniel: “I guess I’m lucky.”

Thoughts:

• Desmond did get shot after all, and not just in the groceries. Hawking comes to visit, and again we’re left pondering the fact that Hawking probably became aware of Desmond and his importance when she read his name in Daniel’s journal (“If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant”), pulling him into the drama as a result.

• Daniel was apparently working at Dharma headquarters in Ann Arbor, doing “research.” What kind of research? How did he get access there?

• Daniel comes back because of the Dharma photo containing Jack, Kate and Hurley. Seeing this seems to activate a switch in him – he’s all business. Interestingly, Daniel seems to anticipate that his mother told Jack it was his “destiny” to go back. This brings up my biggest question: does Daniel know he’s heading to his death? Are we watching another Christ/sacrificial god allegory here? Or is Daniel’s death a genuine unforeseen event to him? He seems to know when certain events are going to occur, within minutes. How? Does Dharma have future records of itself? Daniel deduced this through his “research”? Has he written these details into his journal?

Hawking: “It’s my…job to keep you on your path.”

• For that matter, why does Hawking feel that she has to push Daniel toward his death? Given that she’s his mother I’d expect her to want to save him and change things. Is she simply afraid that if she doesn’t, the universe will somehow “unravel”? Is she attempting to preserve the integrity of what she perceives as the timeline? And if so, why? After all, we know from Desmond that the universe has a way of “course correcting.” Wouldn’t Desmond have arrived on the Island without her “help”? Wouldn’t Daniel have done what he did?

Maybe not. And this is where things get confusing/interesting. Maybe certain things need to be nudged along. And if things can be nudged one way, doesn’t that mean by definition that they can be nudged the other way? If Hawking hadn’t pushed Daniel along, maybe Daniel wouldn’t have grown up to be a physicist. Maybe his “actual/alternate” destiny was to be a musician (and hey – remember who programmed the Looking Glass? A musician), and Hawking mimicked Desmond’s role with Charlie in actually subverting the “universe’s” course in a specific way. Maybe that’s true of all of Widmore and Hawking’s manipulations. They may be creating a deviation in time/space on purpose, in violation of the “natural rules.”

• At the end of this episode, both she and Widmore talk of the “sacrifices” they’ve made to achieve this particular result (there’s that word again, sacrifice). Widmore sacrificed his relationship with Penny. Hawking sacrificed her son. Is Daniel a “sacrifice that the Island demanded”?

Why would they do this? For Jacob? For the MiB? For their own purposes? Who convinces her of this course of action? Are they preserving an “original” timeline? Creating a “loop”? We’ve seen the game of chess referenced a fair amount on this show. Is Daniel a pawn that’s sacrificed to advance another piece? Too ensure the loop’s integrity?

• According to Daniel, Jack and Co. aren’t supposed to be on the Island. Does this mean that Sawyer and Co. ARE? How does Daniel know the difference?

• The opening scene of Season 5 lines up here, as Daniel goes down into the Orchid and we re-experience Chang’s time travel tirade. Only, now we see Daniel warn Chang about “The Incident,” an event we first learned about in Season 2’s Swan Orientation video, narrated, ironically, by Dr. Chang (Candle) himself.

• Daniel tells Chang that Miles is his son, that they’re from the future. He seems to be trying to shake things up, to create as big a “ripple” in this time-period as possible – presumably to prevent The Incident from occurring. But all of what Daniel does here actually fulfills his role prior to The Incident as we know it, and completes the circle of his strange life. Again I ask: Is Daniel a victim of “fate” and his mother’s merciless shepherding? Or is he complicit?

Hawking: “The women in your life will be terribly hurt.”

• We meet Teresa pre-electromagnetic lobotomy, and Hawking clearly knows that she’s headed toward an inglorious fate. How much does Hawking know about Daniel’s future? Is it all from his journal? Is there another source?

• I’m trying to picture the process of picking out that journal to give to Daniel. This is pre-internet, right? Did Hawking go from store to store, trying to find the exact same type of journal she already possessed? Knowing Lost, it was probably in the window of the first shop she visited.

Sawyer/James: “Your mother is an Other?”

• Daniel tells Jack that his mother is the only one who can get them back where they belong – why? Because the Others can do that? Or because Daniel knows that he “has” to die?

• Daniel’s weeping over the faked plane crash is still unexplained. We can assume it’s related to the fact that Daniel recognizes it from the future.

• Widmore’s visit to Daniel clears up a number of things. For one, he’s the one who sunk the plane, confirming that fact for us (he tells Daniel this because Daniel won’t remember it in the morning, which is creepy). For another, we learn that Daniel tested the machine on himself before Teresa tried it, strongly indicating that both he and she experienced delayed “side-effects.” We learn that Widmore sends Daniel to the Island knowing (hoping?) that it will heal his mind.

Widmore and Hawking seem to have the same basic designs for Daniel – he must go to the Island, in part to die.

Daniel: “I tried to avoid telling you this – I didn’t want to change things – but maybe I can.”

• This is weird. By telling Charlotte she has to leave, he’s doing what he knows he’s already done (I know, just hang in there with me). Doesn’t this mean that he consciously ISN’T changing things? Not telling Charlotte to leave would constitute a change. Again I’m wondering: Are all of the things that are “supposed” to happen from Daniel’s POV actually already changes/distortions in the timeline? Is he changing things by doing what he’s always done, preserving a “loop” that shouldn’t exist?

Great Daniel Line: “Ahh…Do you have something for a beginner?”

Great Radzinsky Line: “Just got shot by a physicist!”

• Daniel explains his end-game to Jack – use the Jughead bomb to “reset the past” by detonating it in the Swan. Jack will get all messianic on us shortly.

• Hawking tells Penny that Desmond is “a casualty in a conflict that’s… bigger than any of us.” Is this the Jacob/MiB conflict? Is it bigger still? We learn that Widmore is Faraday’s father, making Penny and Daniel half-brother/sister (sorry about the mixup in the last column, folks), which just makes everything knottier. These characters are interrelated in complex, interlocking ways that go far beyond just missing each other at a gas station. Will these connections be explained?

• Richard offers Daniel a peaceful talk twice, as Dan is waving his gun in Richard’s face. Why is Daniel behaving this way? For the last time: Is he just too adrenalized to think straight, and a victim of that “fickle bitch,” destiny? Or did he invite his own death? Is this tragedy? Or further sacrifice? Adios, Jeremy Davies. You were solid. I expect we’ll see more of you before this story closes.

Monday: “Follow The Leader!”

*****

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Some Like It Hoth & The Variable (S5, eps. 13 & 14)

Some Like It Hoth (S5, ep. 13)

Miles: “That douche is my dad.”

Thoughts:

• The title of this episode is a play on the title of the classic comedy “Some Like it Hot.” While Miles and Hurley don’t dress as women in this episode, they do spend it as a bickering “odd couple” who are disguised in order to hide their true identities.

• The numbers 3:16 show up again on a microwave timer as the episode opens. What’s the significance of this? Well, 16 is obviously one of “The Numbers.” 316 is also the Ajira flight number. Finally, I’m sure that sports fans and Christians also recognize that number – it’s the chapter-and-verse cite of one of the Bible’s most famous passages:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

That’s from the book of John, which shares its name with the Island’s true believer, John Locke. Sacrifice is an enduring, underlying theme on this show, and this passage may hint at the end-game for some of Lost’s major peripheral characters, like Widmore, Hawking and even Jacob. We’ll talk more about this idea in the column for “The Variable.”

• The apartment where Miles first seems to exercise his “powers” is Apt. 4, one of the Numbers. Notice that young Miles retrieves the key from under a stone rabbit, continuing Lost’s thematic preoccupation with cute widdle bunny wabbits.

• Apparently, Dharma didn’t offer much in the way of hazard pay or insurance. Miles and his mother are checking into a fairly shady place here. I like to imagine that Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski is getting a ferret dumped into his bathtub a few doors down from them.

• Horace invites Miles into “the circle of trust,” which echoes the various circles of trust we’ve seen on the show so far, from the castaways’ inner circle in the first seasons, to Ben’s inner group, and now Dharma. Ironically, the “circle of trust” seems to be mostly involved in breaking the trust that they’ve ostensibly established between themselves and the Others.

Great Miles Line: “The ditch had a gun.”

• Pierced Miles is awesome. It’s such a specific, amusing, and relevant choice.

• Why does Miles’ mother tell him that his father “kicked them out” and didn’t want anything to do with them? I can’t remember how he gets her to leave.

• Great Hurley/Miles exchange:

Hurley: “How do you spell ‘bounty hunter’?”
Miles: “What’re you doin’? Writing your memoirs?”

• The dead body that Miles has been assigned to transport to the Orchid Station is a man named Alvarez, killed during the excavation around the Swan Station when his filling was yanked from his mouth and exploded straight through his skull(!). I’m reminded of the way that the key around Jack’s neck floated toward the concrete wall in the Swan during Season 2.

Hurley: “Dude, I can keep a secret.”

• No, dude. You really can’t. There are no secrets around Hurley. He can’t keep one, stumbles into them regularly, and manages to suss out things that the other castaways don’t always notice. This is, I think, one of Hurley’s finest attributes.

• It’s seemingly confirmed during this episode that Miles requires a body in order to use his gift. We’re explicitly shown this when he ‘helps’ a grieving father. I’ve theorized that typically, in order for someone’s ‘ghost’ to manifest on the Island, their body is needed. Is there a connection between Miles’ ability and the appearance of ‘ghosts’ whose bodies reside on the Island?

Hurley: “You’re just jealous my power’s better than yours.”

• This episode also goes out of its way to compare Miles’ and Hurley’s “powers.” Hurley has full conversations with the dead, as if they’re “his pals,” and he can see them, which again makes me think of the Island’s ‘ghosts.’ Notably, Hurley doesn’t need to be around a dead body in order to see that ‘ghost’ and I’m reminded of how Ben was able to see his mother as a boy.

Miles, on the other hand, gets a “sense” of who the dead person was and what they knew when they died. It’s almost as though he ‘reads’ them, pulling the information he needs directly from the body.

Are Hurley and Miles two sides of a coin? Is Hurley able to perceive and/or create ‘ghosts’ of the dead, whose personalities and memories linger on as a kind of electromagnetic energy? And is Miles able to “read” that energy? When a body dies, does residual ‘energy’ linger behind, like data on a ‘dead’ computer?

• Dr. Chang doesn’t think much of the Hydra scientists, huh? His animosity and his threat to Hurley suggest to me that he’s been dealing with them of late. Has a polar bear recently visited the Orchid Station? Was it used to test the Wheel and/or the energy of the Orchid?

If so, it would explain the presence of a Hydra Station animal collar in the desert of Tunisia, which Charlotte discovers back in Season 4.

• We finally learn why it is that Miles was hired by Team Widmore. His mission was to “interrogate the dead” in order to learn the location of Ben Linus. This is kind of interesting, if only because Naomi states that the Island contains an unusual number of the deceased, information she presumably received from Widmore.

Miles: “Third day we were here I was on line in the cafeteria and my mother got in line behind me. That was my first clue.”

• We learn that Dr. Chang, aka Dr. Marvin Candle, aka Dr. Edgar Halliwax, aka, Dr. Marck Wickmund, aka The Love Below is Miles’ father. Miles is the son of the man we’ve known as “Dharma Orientation Video Guy” for the entirety of the show.

Some people were inclined to roll their eyes at this development. Personally, I really dig it. Lost’s obsession with “bad dads” goes to a whole new level with this piece of information, and it makes clear just how knotted and convoluted the timeline around these characters really is.

• I really can’t say enough about the Miles/Hurley dynamic. Obviously I’m a fan of Hurley’s character, but adding Miles to the mix really makes both characters pop. It’s reminiscent of the Hurley/Sawyer dynamic, but Miles brings his own acerbic touch to it. I wish we’d gotten more of this.

• Was Alvarez’s body used to test the Wheel and/or the energy of the Orchid after the polar bears, to see if human tissue could make the ‘leap’?

• It’s messed up that Kate’s attempt at simple human kindness makes Roger Linus suspicious of her.

Dr. Chang: “I like country.”

• The look that Miles gives his father after this line is priceless, no? I’m with you, Dr. Chang. Shotgun Willie is a damn good song. Willie Nelson is kind of amazing. The way that Hurley tries to connect them is kind of adorable.

• Hurley and Miles take Chang to the Swan, where they watch as The Numbers are pounded into the Hatch. Will we learn anything about the significance of The Numbers in Season 6? It’ll be a major disappointment to a lot of people if their only explanation comes from an “alternate reality game.”

Bram: “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?”
Miles: “No. Can’t say that I do.”
Bram: “Then you’re not ready to go to that Island.”

• As far as we’ve seen, NO ONE who’s gone to the Island knows the answer to Bram’s Sphinx-ian riddle. Ergo, none of them have been “ready.” We know now that what lies in the shadow of the statute is “he who will save us all.” Does this mean that Bram, Ilana and company know the true nature and purpose of the Island?

Or are they simply “other Others,” off-Island servants of Jacob who only know that Jacob “will save us all” and that the Island is special?

• Bram offers Miles the chance to understand himself and his abilities – the very things we saw him begging his dying mother for. But here, Miles turns that opportunity away in favor of a pay day. Miles, like all of the castaways, began his journey to the Island in a place of self-denial, without knowledge of “good being.”

• Bram claims that he’s on the team that’s going to win. We still don’t know, however, what these teams really stand for. Do we want Bram, Ilana and Jacob to ‘win’? I think most of us are assuming the answer is yes, but it remains an assumption.

Miles: “Why am I even telling you this?”
Hurley: “Because you’re in pain and you need to let it out.”

• Hurley is the perfect person to talk to Miles about his father. Not only does he share a similar background with Miles, having had his father take off on him and then return later in life, but he also possesses that unique Hurleyian ability to break through people’s self-protective barriers. He’s like a big Buddha version of Robin Williams at the end of Good Will Hunting. It’s not your fault, Miles! It’s not your fault!

• “Shakes his fury fist in triumph” is such a quirky, weird line. I love it.

• Hurley’s spent the majority of this show trying to shake himself free of the curse of The Numbers. How did he get himself into that predicament? He used The Numbers to win the Lottery, which appeared to shift odds in his favor, made him rich, but then created great steaming  piles of terrible misfortune for him. So what’s Hurley doing now? He’s trying to shift the odds in his favor, writing a screenplay that hasn’t existed yet, but with “improvements.”

• With Phil knocked out and stuffed in a closet, Juliet and Sawyer are officially out of Dharma-time. Elizabeth Mitchell’s performance in these episodes is wonderful. Emmy-worthy, really. On rewatch, I’m seeing that the motivation to go back and change things begins here in her character’s head.

Hurley: “Ewoks suck, dude.”

• Lost drops a big old analogy to its own storyline when Hurley talks about changing Empire so that the events of Jedi turn out differently. Lost has established itself as a generational saga, a story that spans parents and children. It’s been a relatively dark ride, an Empire-esque ride you might say. In a sense, Lost’s characters will try to do what Hurley’s doing – rewrite their lives so that they can eliminate the figurative Ewoks from their lives. Is this part of Jacob’s goal? To rewrite history?

• And much as it makes me “unserious” to admit it, I’ve always enjoyed the Ewoks. Yub Nub!

• Miles watching his baby-self in his father’s arms from a window is touching stuff. Even in the midst of all this plot and mythology, there’s still some time for moving little moments.

Daniel: “Hey, Miles. Long time, no see.”

• Daniel returns to the Island dressed in an ominous black Swan suit. “Black Swan” is a term used to refer to highly improbable, highly unpredictable events. The term originates from the 18th century, where it was “common knowledge” that all swans were white until it was discovered that Australia (!) contained black swans. The term became used to signify an improbable event that may come to pass.

The successful alteration of history would certainly qualify as a “Black Swan” event. We’ve been told again and again how history can’t be changed. We’ve seen that “whatever happened happened.” In effect, we’ve been told its impossible. But, as The Variable is about to suggest, maybe there are black swans in Australia after all. If the bomb is “successful,” what’s going to happen? My theory? Jack and Co. are going to wake up on the Island in 2007, alongside previously-dead cast members like Boone and Charlie, quite possibly in a mirror-image of the opening scene from Season 1. As a result of the bomb’s detonation, the castaways’ consciousnesses will have traveled back in time, allowing them, like Eloise the rat in Daniel’s maze, to run the “maze” of their lives more successfully this time, and so resulting in more of them arriving at the “final point” in the show with other castaways who managed to survive “this time around.” Doing this allows the first 5 Seasons to stand as they are, creates immediate mystery and confusion, keeps us from revisiting the entirety of five seasons compressed into one season, and reaffirms many of Lost’s themes and preoccupations.

I’m probably wrong. And I’ll be happy if I am.

• Check out the Column for “The Variable” after the page break!